Tell me a little bit about Pack the Pack. What has you excited about it?
Pack the Pack is a real-time tile laying game that is about what happens AFTER the adventurers slay the dragon. They are standing around the loot pile and have to figure out how to shove all of that beautiful booty into their packs and get back to town before the rest of the party to be crowed the true victor… the hero that the town tells stories about. It has me excited because it’s exactly the type of game that I like to play- a quick game that you can play multiple times so you can build strategy over the course of an evening, not the course of a year, and has you laughing with and yelling at the people you are playing with. The mechanics are completely generic in that I could play this with my mom, but nerdy enough that it’s the perfect game to play before (or after) a night of role playing. When I first started designing it, I thought it would be a super small, super niche game but the more and more I really worked on it, the more I saw that it really could have a broad appeal and that’s pretty exciting.
I’m also excited that it was chosen out of 500 entries to be one of Cards Against Humanity’s Tabletop Deathmatch finalists. That’s crazy to be pulled out of a pool like that. This was the first game that I really put myself into and it’s a really odd feeling to have that sort of public scrutiny but also that validation too. Games, almost by definition, are a hobby, and to have it be a “professional” thing is a really weird and exhilarating feeling. It’s also probably the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt. Games are such a passion, such a part of ME that to get critiqued is much more personal than feedback at work. So that feeling, as weird feeling as it is, also has me feeling alive and that’s pretty damn exciting.
What inspired Pack the Pack?
What was it like to compete in Tabletop Deathmatch?
And then to have it put on youtube for all to watch? I’ll take the film crew judging me as a mom any day.
Tell me more about your mechanics of Pack the Pack. How do they work?
In the basic version, you count how many complete circles of a single color you have made, extra points for three or four tiles (using quarter circle pieces). In the advanced version, you instead are scoring the loot items on the tile but they only count if the tile was part of a complete circle. This version, on the back side of the playmat, is much more strategic and for the more serious gamer. In both versions, you get extra points for going to town first because you got the best prices at the market and more time to schmooze with the townsfolk.
What do you hope to see happen with Pack the Pack in the future?